Book in hand, and without removing his tortoise-shell spectacles, he passed out into the garden at the rear.  There a cloth was laid under a pavilion.

“In a country where it never rains,” said the host, “where it is eternal spring, walls to a house are conventions on which to stack books and hang pictures.  Mary has chosen nature for her decorative effect—­cheaper, even, than mine.  In the distance is Galeria; in the foreground, what was desert six years ago.”

The overhead lamp deepened to purple the magenta of the bougainvillea vines running up the pillars of the pavilion; made the adjacent rows of peony blossoms a pure, radiant white; while beyond, in the shadows, was a broad path between rows of young palms.

Mary appeared around a hedge which hid the open-air kitchen.  The girl of the gray riding-habit was transformed into a girl in white.  Jack saw her as a domestic being.  He guessed that she had seen that the table was set right; that she had had a look-in at the cooking; that the hands whose boast it was that they could shoot, had picked the jonquils in the slender bronze vase on the table.

“Father, there you are again, bringing a book to the dining-room against the rules,” she warned him; “against all your preachments about reading at meals!”

“That’s so, Mary,” said Jasper Ewold, absently, regarding the book as if some wicked genius had placed it in his hand quite unbeknown to him.  “But, Mary, it is Professor Giuccamini at last!  Giuccamini that I have waited for so long!  I beg your pardon, Sir Chaps!  When I have somebody to talk to I stand doubly accused.  Books at dinner!  I descend into dotage!”

In disgust he started toward the house with the book.  But in the very doorway he paused and, reopening the book, turned three or four pages with ravenous interest.

“Giuccamini and I agree!” he shouted.  “He says there is no doubt that Burlamacchi and Pico were correct.  Cosmo de’ Medici did call Savonarola to his death-bed, and I am glad of it.  I like good stories to turn out true!  But here I have a listener—­a live listener, and I ramble on about dead tyrants and martyrs.  I apologize—­I apologize!” and he disappeared in the library.

“Father does not let me leave books in the living-room, which is his.  Why should he bring them to the dining-room, which is mine?” Mary explained.

“There must be law in every household,” Jack agreed.

“Yes, somebody fresh to talk to, at, around, and through!” called Jasper Ewold, as he reappeared.  “Yes, and over your head; otherwise I shall not be flattered by my own conversation.”

“He glories in being an intellectual snob,” Mary said.  “Please pretend at times not to understand him.”

“Thank you, Mary.  You are the corrective that keeps my paternal superiority in balance,” answered her father, with a comprehending wave of his hand indicating his sense of humor at the same time as playful insistence on his role as forensic master of the universe.